Brand building is one of the quickest and most effective ways to grow your investing business. Perhaps even more importantly, you don’t need to spend a lot of money or have a large pipeline to get your brand noticed by the masses. All you need to do is utilize the internet and commit to doing business in a certain way. If you can become the go-to investor in your area for certain kinds of deals, you will find yourself with more deals than you know what to do with. In order to start brand building, you need to figure out which area of the business you want to focus on. Done correctly, brand building can grow your real estate business exponentially.
Building a brand and creating a niche starts with looking at which parts of the business you enjoy the most. It is not uncommon for one area to have several investors looking at the same property. Therefore, it has never been more important to separate yourself from the rest of the pack. Ultimately, there is one thing that you can do to make yourself stand out from every other investor: branding. Your brand can be anything you like it to be. The beauty about your real estate brand identity is that you can make it anything you want. You don’t have to follow everyone else. If you want to focus solely on commercial buildings, feel free to do so. If you want to invest in condominiums or mobile homes, you can strive with these properties. There are no boundaries in what or how you want to market yourself. There is really just one rule to follow if you truly want to master a niche: be the most knowledgeable. The people around you will see right through you if you don’t know what you are talking about. At the very least, you will lose credibility if you can’t hold a conversation.
The internet has made brand building as easy as it has ever been. There is no greater time than the present to grow your business and get your name out. Your website should be the genesis of your brand building – the start-all and end-all. Any marketing on social media will lead people back to your website. Your website should be a reflection of how you want to do business and your point of view. It is a good idea to have a picture of yourself and maybe even a tagline at the top of your homepage. If people get a visual of yourself they feel that they know you even if you have never met. You don’t need an expensive website, but you do need to display yourself and your brand prominently throughout the page.
Once your website is up and running, you can begin to focus on social media. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can allow you to reach more people in 60 days than any other type of marketing you do. Simply becoming a member of these sites is not enough to grow your brand, however. You need to commit to doing something every day that will gain the attention of those you wish to follow you. This can mean something as quick as a generic post about the business or as detailed as a video blog. The time you spend each day is not as important as the consistency and the content. Adding to your brand is similar to building your body. If you lift weights for a week, you may not see much of a transformation. However, the longer you train, the more likely you are to see results. The posts you make will give people an idea of who you are, how you invest and what kind of business partner you can be. If you commit to making posts every day, you will see an increase in your brand recognition.
The brand you build online is directly correlated to how your business is run. Every networking opportunity should incorporate your brand. If you go to an investment club meeting, you should be prepared to discuss your brand. Your business card should have your picture and your tagline on it so every new person you meet knows exactly what you are about. You should make it a point to gain one new, solid contact and introduce yourself with a half dozen other people at every meeting you go to. Building a brand means that you are willing to get it out there and generate business. Saying you want to do business a certain way is only good if you put yourself out there.
Once you close a deal with a new contact, your work is not done. Word of mouth is one of the biggest influences on repeat business that you could get. After every successful transaction, you should call everyone that was involved in the deal. You can also send a quick, hand written note thanking them for their efforts. Something this small will certainly get the attention of your contacts and will keep you in mind for subsequent deals. You don’t need to be an expert brand builder to send a thank you note. For the .49 cents it costs to do so, it could have the greatest impact on anything you can do to build your brand.
Once you are known in your area, you will find that people will want to work with you. Whatever your brand is, you need to be willing to commit to it with all your passion. People tend to work with people they know. Your brand will get you known quicker than ever before.
